MSNBC is on a roll this week with ignorant, sexist attacks against high-ranking women in the Trump administration. First, Rachel Maddow featured an entire segment slamming new Justice Department spokeswoman Kerri Kupec for graduating from Liberty University Law School. Why? Because the school is too Christian for the progressive cable news host.

Then, on “Meet the Press,” Chuck Todd bullied Bettina Inclan, a Hispanic working mom of two who just landed the prominent role of spokeswoman for NASA. Her mother—yes, her mother—apparently said some problematic things.

Inclan and Kupec are young women who rose to the top of their fields, heading communications shops for massive government agencies. (Full disclosure: I worked with Kupec in her previous role as legal communications director of Alliance Defending Freedom.) If these women were liberal, it’s more than likely that social justice warriors and self-proclaimed feminists would be praising their accomplishments. But because these women happen to work for the Trump administration, MSNBC hosts think it’s fair game to mock them.

“We’ve got a new Justice Department spokesperson who’s from Liberty University, and Liberty University was founded by a televangelist so that your Christian child wouldn’t be corrupted by actual higher education,” Maddow said on the NBC podcast, “Why Is This Happening? With Chris Hayes. “And now that’s the spokesperson for the Justice Department. These things add up. They have real results in the world.”

She continued: “Is there going to be a backlash to that? Is there going to be a resurgent intellectualism in hard-line conservatism that isn’t the kind of white supremacist stuff that we’re seeing, which is the pseudo-intellectual stuff?”

The suggestion that you can’t be intellectual and a person of faith insults Kupec’s intelligence and shows ignorance of our nation’s history. Jerry Falwell Jr., president of Liberty University, responded to Maddow on a Fox News podcast: “She needs to study her history,” he said. “Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Brown — most of the Ivy League schools — were founded by preachers and evangelists, and that’s a long tradition in this country, and she just shows her ignorance and religious bigotry by making comments like that.”

Also, as Shannon Bream pointed on her show “Fox News at Night,” “for Liberty University’s Law School, where Kerri graduated from, they had a 96 percent first-time bar pass rate this year, which is about 20 points ahead of the national average.”

Facts and history have never stopped Democrats from smearing women who don’t fit their radical agenda. Using a woman’s prestigious law school degree as grounds to discredit her, however, is something shamefully new.

The Maddow segment could only be outdone by Todd, who suggested on “Meet the Press” that the new NASA spokeswoman is unqualified for her job because of something her mom said once.

“Meet Bettina Inclan. She’s a longtime GOP spokeswoman and activist, and now she’s the agency’s newest associate administrator for communication,” Todd said. “And for Bettina Inclan, talking about space runs in the family.”

Todd then plastered a picture of Inclan’s mom on the TV and proceeded to mock her for running an unsuccessful race for Congress in Florida. That’s right. In “The Year of the Woman,” a prominent cable news host made fun of a woman for losing her bid for Congress. Of course, this would have never happened had Bettina Rodriguez Aguilera, Inclan’s mom, run as a Democrat. But laughing at a Republican woman for losing is more than acceptable. It’s the status quo.

“She was even endorsed, by the way, by the Miami Herald,” Todd said, “which called her an unusual candidate. Now why, you may ask, is she so unusual? Because Bettina Rodriguez Aguilera claims she was once abducted by aliens.”

The “Meet the Press” host then played a clip of Rodriguez Aguilera from 2009, when she spoke about an alien encounter she says she remembered back when she was seven.

Strange? Absolutely. But the Miami Harold did endorse her. More importantly, Inclan isn’t responsible for anything her mother has said.

When men commit misdeeds, we’re told it’s sexist and wrong to hold their wives responsible. I agree with that standard. But regarding women serving in the Trump administration, the left apparently thinks it’s okay to hold them responsible for every crazy thing a family member has said.

The logic is absurd, and partly explains why women might hesitate to take on high-profile careers. After all, who wants to see her mom get made fun of on national TV? But of course, this insane new standard will only ever apply to one side. Democrat women will always be safe.

If MSNBC were serious about wanting to see women to succeed, these sexist, baseless smears would never occur. Instead, they’d hold up Kupec and Inclan as examples of what hardworking women can and do achieve. But it’s 2018, and liberal hypocrisy is their life. Sadly, I wouldn’t expect anything more.

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Independent Women's Forum is an educational 501(c)(3) dedicated to developing and advancing policies that aren’t just well intended, but actually enhance people’s freedom, choices, and opportunities. IWF is the sister organization of the Independent Women’s Voice.​